After Arling Holland's debut in the Manchester City uniform, in a 3:1 loss to Liverpool in the charity shield match, there were quite a few people in England, including commentators, who said: "The fact that he scored in bunches in Austria and Germany, does not say anything about what he will do in England. Premier League It's a different world."
Indeed, Holland disappointed in that game against Liverpool, when he failed to score and also recorded a hair-raising miss, in front of an empty net.
After the game, the 22-year-old Norwegian spoke openly.
"As a striker, I must not get under pressure if I have a less than good game, because if you think too much in the end you do things you don't want to do. The idea is to try and enjoy, live in the moment. People talk about what I did last year, but for me everything What matters is the next game."
Holland testifies: "I live from game to game", photo: Getty Images
Exactly one week later, Manchester City opened the league with a 0:2 victory over West Ham.
Erling Holland scored twice, and that was just the beginning.
He also scored 3:3 against Newcastle and exploded with two consecutive threes, in victories 2:4 over Crystal Palace and 0:6 over Nottingham Forest.
The few people who doubted Holland, or argued that he would take time to adapt to the Premier League, are gone.
Because what can be said about a player who, in his first five games in the league that is considered the strongest in the world, scores 9 goals?
The best historians and statisticians found more and more records that Holland broke in his first month in the Premier League, and there is almost no doubt that he will continue to break historical records, ones that last for decades.
After the hat-trick he scored in 26 minutes against Nottingham, his coach Pep Guardiola was asked if Holland is on his way to becoming Manchester City's all-time leading scorer.
A bit strange question considering that the record holder Sergio Aguero scored his 260 goals in 10 years, and here we are talking about a player who barely completed a month in the team.
"Sergio is a legend," Pep said.
"No one will be able to take the place he has in the hearts of City fans after scoring the most important goal in the modern history of the team. What Sergio did is amazing. But Erling has the talent and quality to be there. But I know Erling a little, and I don't think that he would be happy to break records if we don't win titles. He also knows that records and goals do not guarantee titles."
"One month ago it was a disaster because of the Community Shield, and now he's going to break every record..." 😅
Pep Guardiola is delighted with Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez' starts to their #ManCity careers.
🔵⤵️pic.twitter.com/SwFKG6d6I7
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) September 2, 2022
Coming to win titles
Erling Holland decided to move to Manchester City because with them he could win championships, in the Champions League.
In his two and a half years in Dortmund he won one title, the German Cup.
And if he had stayed in Dortmund it might have remained his only title.
The Norwegian scored 86 goals in 89 games for Dortmund and before that scored 29 goals in 27 games for Salzburg.
That is, since he left Molda in January 2019, almost 4 years ago when he was 18 and a half years old, he scored 124 goals in 122 games.
And to that you also need to add 31 cooking.
The coming month is going to be just as interesting for the fearsome striker, even more so than his first month as a Manchester City player.
On Saturday he will try to continue improving his numbers in an away game against Aston Villa, and on Tuesday City will open their Champions League campaign against Sevilla.
Last season he scored 4 goals against Sevilla when he played in Dortmund.
Pep and Holland.
On the way to degrees together?, Photo: AP
The most exciting game will be in the second round of the Champions League, when City will host Dortmund, and two weeks later the Manchester derby awaits him, against United, who last year made great efforts to sign him.
Meanwhile, the English media are trying to estimate how many goals Holland will score by the end of the season in the league, and quite a few people are convinced that he will break the record of Mohamed Salah, who scored 32 goals in the 2017-18 season.
By the way, Alan Shearer and Andy Cole scored 34 goals, but this was at a time when there were 42 games in a season and not 38. It is not impossible that Holland will also break Shearer and Cole's record.
And here are some more data related to the start of the Norwegian bomber's season:
in 30 years of the Premier League, only 5 players before him scored two threes in two consecutive games.
It took Haaland 5 games to do so.
Holland scored in Dortmund on average every 87 minutes.
In Austria he scored every 62 minutes.
At City he scores a goal every 43 minutes.
9 goals in the first 5 games of the season is an all-time record.
The previous record holders, Sergio Aguero and Mick Quinn, scored 8 goals in the first 5 games.
Harry Kane was the top goalscorer for the month of August in the Premier League: 8 goals in 26 games.
Erling shattered the record, with 9 goals in 5 games.
Kane.
Holland smashed his record, photo: Getty Images
Holland scored his 9 goals in 22 kicks, of which 11 were on target.
Only two of his kicks were stopped by the goalkeepers.
He registered only 44 passes, that is 4.9 passes for each goal, and two passes for each kick towards the goal.
Holland touched the ball 85 times, meaning a goal for every 9.4 touches, and a kick on goal every 3.8 touches on average.
Almost a third of his total touches on the ball (29) were in the opponent's 16 square.
When Mohamed Salah scored 32 goals in the 2017-18 season he scored on average every 91 minutes.
Holland scores every 43 minutes.
Salah started that fantastic season with 3 goals in his first 5 games, compared to Holland's 9.
Salah.
He also stayed behind, photo: AP
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